PBS Offers Intelligent Design Documentary

CREATION - Evolution Headlines ^ | 04/28/2003 | Illustra Media/CREATION - Evolution Headlines

[Remedy]

According to Illustra Media, the Public Broadcasting System uploaded the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life to its satellite this past Sunday. For the next three years, it will be available for member stations to download and broadcast. In addition, PBS is offering the film on their Shop PBS website under Science/Biology videos (page 4).

The film, released a little over a year ago, has been called a definitive presentation of the Intelligent Design movement. With interviews and evidences from eight PhD scientists, it presents strictly scientific (not religious) arguments that challenge Darwinian evolution, and show instead that intelligent design is a superior explanation for the complexity of life, particularly of DNA and molecular machines. The film has been well received not only across America but in Russia and other countries. Many public school teachers are using the material in science classrooms without fear of controversies over creationism or religion in the science classroom, because the material is scientific, not religious, in all its arguments and evidences, and presents reputable scientists who are well qualified in their fields: Dean Kenyon, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Steven Meyer, William Dembski, Scott Minnich, Jed Macosko, and Paul Nelson, with a couple of brief appearances by Phillip E. Johnson, the "founder" of the Intelligent Design movement.

Check with your local PBS Station to find out when they plan to air it. If it is not on their schedule, call or write and encourage them to show the film. Why should television partly supported by public tax funds present only a one-sided view on this subject, so foundational to all people believe and think? We applaud PBS's move, but it is only partial penance for the Evolution series and decades of biased reporting on evolution.

This is a wonderful film, beautifully edited and shot on many locations, including the Galápagos Islands, and scored to original music by Mark Lewis. People are not only buying it for themselves, but buying extra copies to show to friends and co-workers. Unlocking the Mystery of Life available here on our Products page in VHS and DVD formats. The film is about an hour long and includes vivid computer graphics of DNA in action. The DVD version includes an extra half-hour of bonus features, including answers to 14 frequently-asked questions about intelligent design, answered by the scientists who appear in the film.

This is a must-see video. Get it, and get it around.

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Intelligent Design Gets a Powerful New Media Boost 03/09/2002
Exclusive Over 600 guests gave a standing ovation Saturday March 9 at the premiere of a new film by Illustra Media, Unlocking the Mystery of Life. This 67-minute documentary is in many ways a definitive portrayal of the Intelligent Design movement that is sweeping the country. Intelligent Design is a non-religious, non-sectarian, strictly scientific view of origins with both negative and positive arguments: negative, that Darwinism is insufficient to explain the complexity of life, and positive, that intelligent design, or information, is a fundamental entity that must be taken into consideration in explanations of the origin of complex, specified structures like DNA. The film features interviews with a Who's Who of the Intelligent Design movement: Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Paul Nelson, Stephen Meyer, Dean Kenyon, William Dembski, and others, who explain the issues and arguments for intelligent design as the key to unlocking the mystery of life. The film also features nearly 20 minutes of award-quality computer animation of molecular machines, manufacturing plants, and storage libraries of elaborate information - DNA and proteins at work in the cell, climaxing with a dazzling view of DNA transcription and translation.
In his keynote address, Dr. Paul Nelson (who appears in the film), gave reasons for optimism. He said that Time Magazine, usually solidly Darwinian, admitted just last week that these Intelligent Design scientists may be onto something. U.S. News and World Report is also coming out with a piece on I.D. And Stephen Meyer, who also appears in the film, could not be at the premiere because he was on his way to Ohio (see next headline), armed with copies of the film to give to the school board members. Nelson said that scientists should not arbitrarily rule design off the table. "Keeping science from discovering something that might be true is like having a pair of spectacles that distorts your vision," he said. "It does profound harm to science." He described how Ronald Numbers, evolutionist, once told him that design might be true, but science is a game, with the rule that scientists cannot even consider the possibility of design; "that's just the way it is," he said. (See this quote by Richard Lewontin for comparison.) Yet design is already commonly considered in archaeology, cryptography, forensics, and SETI, so why not in biology? Apparently this arbitrary rule has become a national controversy. Intelligent Design, says Nelson, is finally removing a "rule of the game" that is hindering science. If the reaction of the crowd at the premiere luncheon was any indication, Unlocking the Mystery of Life has launched a well-aimed smart weapon at the citadels of Darwinism.

We highly recommend this film. Copies are just now becoming available for $20. Visit IllustraMedia.com and order it. View it, and pass it around. Share it with your teachers, your co-workers, your church. You will have no embarrassment showing this high-quality, beautiful, amazing film to anyone, even the most ardent evolutionist.

 

 

[Dimensio]

"Once again, even if you utterly disproved evolution, how would this prove the Bible correct?"

Let me make it simple, we live in a sustained environment. Think of a usable swimming pool, without continuous maintenance it would be unusable.

That does not answer my question. How would disproving evolution prove that the Bible is correct?

[Tribune7]

Your tax dollars at work

Didn't PBS recently run a long pro-evo series?

[Aric2000]

Nothing Pseudo religious about it.

Just documented fact.

Nice try though....

[balrog666]

Toilet skipping placemarker.

[PatrickHenry]

Didn't PBS recently run a long pro-evo series?

I don't know; I rarely watch PBS. But what's the point here? If they run an astronomy series, must they then run an astrology series too?

[atlaw]

What do you understand to be the evidence for tectonic plate motion?

[Right Wing Professor]

Once the Creater has created something (such as how water interacts with temperature) there is no more need for involvement.

I agree completely.

So He created a set of natural laws that permitted mutation and the survival of the fittest. Having done that, why not let the laws do their thing? Why couldn't an all powerful God use evolution as a tool of His creation?

[jlogajan]

Why couldn't an all powerful God use evolution as a tool of His creation?

Apparently they don't think he is smart enough.

[atlaw]

My point is that you seem to accept the inferences drawn from plate boundries, hot spots, fossil placement, etc. as evidence of plate movement, yet you apparently do not accept any inferences whatsoever from the fossil record, demonstrable speciation, the geologic column, etc. as evidence of evolution. Why is that?

[tortoise]

New DNA information cannot come from mistakes.

Umm... You can't continue to use your apparent definition of "information" and argue with the math/science guys at the same time. There is a very precise mathematical definition of information that is used in science and math (and economics and engineering, etc). For starters, an increase in entropy causes an increase in information content. Anything that increases the entropy of DNA is increasing its information content, and for better or worse (depending on the situation), most things that modify the DNA (viruses, random chemicals, radiation) generally either increase the information content or destroy the DNA. So random natural processes are creating "new DNA information" all the time. In fact there are processes in the cells that have the function of preventing the addition of new DNA information to protect against the fact that it happens frequently.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Special pleading. You did not offer an answer at all. How did something outside the universe come into being?

[atlaw]

Continental drift is well accepted today. It was not in the recent past. Your incredulity that anyone ever questioned the idea is misplaced.

What you describe as irrefutable proof (fault lines, earthquakes, volcanic activity, hot spots, magnetic striping at mid-ocean ridges, etc.) is actually proof of what might be called "micro-movement" (perhaps analogous to "micro-evolution"?). Macro-movement (the drift of entire continents) was not readily accepted as a reasonable inference from such micro-movement. After all, no one has ever actually seen a continent move.

Your willingness to accept without question the inference of macro-movement from the available evidence just seems peculiar to me. One hears all the time that while "micro-evolution" may be true, that is no evidence of "macro-evolution", and that evolution is nothing but sheer spectulation due to the lack of eye-witness evidence. It just seems logical that you would apply this same reasoning to plate tectonics.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Think of a usable swimming pool, without continuous maintenance it would be unusable.

Only to humans. Wrigglers do quite well in non-maintained pools. So do tadpoles. So does algae. Niches weren't created for you; you just found your niche.